fallen starlight
by RipredtheGnawer
Summary: No star-crossed lovers or best friends who realized what they had. Just a girl who saw a boy, and a boy who woke her up from her nightmares. Because they'll never leave, and the least he can do is hold them at bay. FINNICK/ANNIE rating subject to change
1. 1: bad boy

**A/N: Chapters will be short, just so you know.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. All awesomeness belongs to SuCo**

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bad boy

The first time she sees him, she knows he's no good. It's the first day of school and he's leaning back in his chair like a _bad boy_, and Dad always told her to sit up and pay attention. He certainly isn't.

Luckily, the teacher gives her a seat on the other side of the room, almost as far away as it's possible to be.

The teacher calls everybody's name, and the whole time he's laughing with his friends. She glares at him and wishes he'd be quiet, but bad boys never do anything right, so she's not surprised when he keeps talking.

She says her name, Annie Cresta, Ma'am, and smiles winningly. He yells out his name as though it's the best sound in the world, _FINNICK ODAIR, MISSUS_, and she covers her ears.

His smile is better.


	2. 2: eel girl

**A/N: I don't own the Hunger Games.**

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eel girl

The whistle blows and he watches her dive into the water, all grace and smoothness and fluidity. She's like an eel, he thinks, twisting and bending like so much seaweed.

She climbs out and it's announced that she's the fastest, and he claps along with everybody else. On the board they show the runners-up and there's his name, right below hers. He likes how that looks, the _a_ and _f_ so close together, and how they blur together if he squints.

Of course, for all her swimming skill, he knows she's still annoying and he really wishes he could keep the trophy that he's got to hand over. But he lets it go and just nods when she congratulates him on second place.

She walks away and he runs off, glad to be free of talking to a _girl_.


	3. 3: valentimes

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.**

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valentimes

She passes out the hearts, little red things with interesting shells pasted on. She knows it's childish but she's only ten and she really can't understand it when they're all laughing at her.

She thought they'd like them. She thought Valentimes's Day – no, Valentine's Day, she hears her mother correcting her – she thought it was supposed to be sweet and that you were supposed to be nice. She just doesn't get it.

She looks around the room, face red and burning and tears almost slidingfallingdripping and sees another face, one that's just upset as hers but not showing it.

He's staring at her and he's the only one of his friends that's not laughing and she knows why. She knows he's the only one who didn't get a shell, who doesn't have a reason to laugh, and that's exactly why he's silent, but she sees the confusion in the green and wishes she could tell him.

Tell him that she didn't give him one of her hearts because he already has it.


	4. 4: peer pressure

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.**

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peer pressure

He sees her watching him sometimes.

She doesn't know he notices, at least, he doesn't think so. It's not as if he hasn't got other girls distracting him.

He's not trying to be mean but it's difficult because everyone's watching and he's embarrassed and she says, wanna do something fun?

And he says _no, of course not, who'd go anywhere with you_ and he finds her crying later, and he's about to apologize, he really is, when he remembers that Marlene is waiting for him.

He slips off before she knows he was there, but her eyes are never as easy to ignore.


	5. 5: signature

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games**

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signature

She sidles into the square, breathing in the ever-salty air and wishing she were anywhere else. Signing her name – the familiar loop of the _a_, the double hunch of the _n_, and the little star over the _i_. She knows that fifteen is much too old to sign like that, but Reaping day somehow manages to bring her back to age five, when she clung to her mother's hand and waited to see which kids would die.

And it's her name that's called, but she doesn't cry.

And her parents come in, but she still doesn't cry.

And her friends say it was nice knowing you, like they've got no hope, but she still doesn't cry.

And her hour's up, and a certain boy hasn't entered the room, and she sobs as though she's trying to drown herself, and she thinks that maybe she should.


	6. 6: watching

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games**

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watching

He watches her now, as she pulls an eight in training and joins with the traditional Career pack. As she dazzles the crowd in her mermaid costume the night before she'll probably die. As she grows close, too close, to the others in her fragile alliance, and he realizes what he was missing.

He watches her lead them, though it's usually the District 2 boys who are in control, but nobody can deny the power of the tall, charming girl from the fishing district – though, he tells himself, he can fish better than she can, even if she _is_ faster.

For a moment there, he's really scared for her, because as strong as she is, the boy from 11 is stronger. But then he's dead and it turns out he shouldn't have worried, and he watches as she walks away from his body without a backward glance.

And then he watches as little twelve-year-old Jet's head falls to the ground, and he watches as she wakes up and sees it, and he watches as she realizes what it is, and he watches as she starts to scream, and he nearly starts screaming himself.

But he doesn't, because he can tell she's going mad, and if there's one thing he's not going to do, it's act like the crazy girl.

So he screams on the inside instead.


	7. 7: away

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games**

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away

She runs and runs and runs but the blood is running faster and if only it were water and she could wash it off. But she should know after two weeks of a nightmare that the red isn't going to come off, and maybe she could live with it, except she keeps seeing those terrified dead eyes only inches from her own, and there's nothing she can do to make them go away.

She sits there and closes her own eyes, rocking back and forth with her hands over her ears to block the screaming, and then she feels the ground shaking and she jumps up but the water finally finds her and carries her away.

It's water, and this is what she was born to do, so she sort of floats and sort of swims and sort of wins but mostly she tries to avoid the bodies drifting around her.


	8. 8: forget

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.**

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forget

He sees her come back, except she's not here anymore. It's not just her new house and the fact that she's exempt from homework and school and every other torture device that adults invented, because she's _not here_. She's got a blank look in her eyes, and everyone can see that she's too far away to be anywhere but a corpse-filled lake.

He forgets about her. He forgets the moment when the world was killing her and he wished he could help. He forgets the way she cried behind the school. He forgets the way she looked on stage at the post-Game interview, when she didn't answer any questions but just mumbled about blood and water and dying kids, and he forgets how lost she looked when she showed up on the beach a week after she returned.

He forgets all that, but he remembers what it feels like to take the trophy in his hands and feel its cold metal against his fingers, still wet from the sea, and hear the crowd screaming his name, _FINNICK ODAIR_, and it really is the best sound in the world.

But it turns out that he'd rather not hear his name when the escort says it.


	9. 9: just maybe

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.**

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just maybe

She knows him, remembers him from something, some half-real life lived long ago. She doesn't pay him much attention, though, because what place do vague memories have in the here and now that haunts her waking dreams?

But still, she sees him on the screen with a flashing _10_ underneath his name and she's happy. Maybe it's absurd and maybe it's going to hurt later but she can't help hoping. She watches him on a stage with bright lights like the stars themselves and he grins at the audience with bright teeth, glinting white, and she hopes a little more.

And she runs back to the old woman mentor with a face wrinkled like ripples on water and says please, please, please let's help him.

No, not yet, is the answer, the Games haven't started yet. But maybe.

She holds onto the answer like it's tangible, a little bit of starlight in the darkness.

Maybe, she tells herself, will turn into a yes. It _will_.


	10. 10: predictable

**A/N: Oh my Mockingjay, I am _so_ sorry that I haven't updated this for about a month! I have been so completely sidetracked, and that's no excuse, and gosh, I just feel horrible. Anyways, here's the chapter now, and another one after it. So. Please forgive me!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games**

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predictable

He can't really understand why it's him who's got to survive in this hellhole. What's the point of it all? He's _FINNICK ODAIR_ and once upon a time he was the luckiest person alive, but now he's just another one of those probably doomed fightinglivingdying kids trying to eke out another heartbeat in a trap.

Still, he tells himself, he's in here for a reason – whatever it is – so he might as well _try_ to survive. What harm could it do? The only other option is to give up, and that's the one thing that he's definitely not going to do.

It's so unexpected, but at the same time nothing but predictable, when the trident falls out of the stars, silver as though it was made of those pinpricks of light in the sky.

His victory is inevitable after that, and no one's surprised, least of all him. It's more glorious than the crazy girl who won last year, he thinks, because even if he did freak when his ally from District 6 was killed, he didn't lose it and go into shock. No, he kept a cool head and defeated the rest of them.

_Defeated_. What a simple word for murder.


	11. 11: a little bit

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.**

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a little bit

He's back. It's like the whole District is a little bit brighter, her nightmares a bit dimmer, the screams a bit softer. She watches him move into his house in the Victors' Village with boxes and furniture and everything else a person has wherever they live. She meanders across the lawn, standing there, just looking.

She can tell he's not happy. It's in his eyes and in the way his shoulders hunch and the way he doesn't always hear when someone calls his name. She wishes she could help. Could tell him _it'll get better after a while_, only that would be a lie. Because it won't.

He notices her and fixes her with such a penetrating stare that eventually she runs back to her own house, and his eyes remind her only too well of another boy from a distant nightmare, and maybe nothing's any brighter after all.


End file.
